EE has built a network for driverless cars

Google's driverless car.
Google
EE, Britain's biggest mobile network, is hoping a big chunk of its future growth is going to come from "smart" machines like driverless cars connecting to its new 4G network.

EE is betting big on the "internet of things" — the idea that one day soon everything from your toothbrush to your shoes could be connected to the internet, feeding data back to a server somewhere that can help things run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Or, for the less optimistic, sell you more targeted ads.

Other internet providers and companies are also betting on this trend, but EE's big advantage is that unlike fixed line operators such as BT, it focuses solely on wireless coverage. EE says its 4G network has 20% more coverage than rivals and is 50% faster. That makes it great for things that move — like driverless cars.

CEO Olaf Swantee told Business Insider: "When you look at our business, we're connecting of course consumers and a lot of employees for businesses to our network, but over time you will start to see machines being connected to our network as well. We have the first 4G enabled machine-to-machine network.

"When you project yourself forward, the Teslas of this world are already piloting self-driving applications, a self-driving application, of course, needs a very high-speed mobile network to avoid accidents. That's the idea with this 4G machine-to-machine platform."

EE already has 2.1 million machines hooked up to its network, a 12.4% rise from this time last year. Most of them are connected to EE's 3G network but it recently launched EE Connect, the UK's first 4G platform dedicated to machines.

Swantee says: "The first company with whom we've partnered is Royal Mail. Royal Mail will deploy across their network postal digital assistants — it's a digital assistant with more applications for the customer, for example better recognition of signatures, tracking, and probably over time applications that use video."

EE's results show that it added 1.3 million new 4G customers in the quarter, maintaining its position as the biggest 4G network in Europe with 12.6 million customers on the fast network. Business customers rose by 7%.

Turnover fell 0.3% compared to the same quarter last year to £1.58 billion ($2.4 billion).